Madrid bans Israelis from gay pride march over Gaza flotilla raid

Madrid has banned an Israeli delegation from the city's gay pride parade in protest at last week's Gaza flotilla raid, British daily The Guardian reported on Wednesday.

Madrid Gay Pride flag

"After what has happened, and as human rights campaigners, it seemed barbaric to us to have them taking part," Antonio Poveda, of Spain's Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transexuals and Bisexuals told The Guardian.

"We don't just defend our own little patch," he said.

According to the Guardian, the Israeli group, all Tel Aviv residents, have reacted angrily to the notification, and said that the decision to mix the Gaza flotilla with gay pride was wrong.

Tel Aviv municipality spokesman Eytan Schwartz told the Spanish paper El Mundo that it was not the city's job to either support or condemn such issues.

"I don't recall Madrid's gay organizations condemning any of the Palestinian terrorist attacks on cafes or buses," Schwartz said. "Islamist fundamentalists don't just want to finish off Israel but that they also believe homosexuals should 'cure themselves' or die."

Schwartz added that the Spanish federation that made the decision should speak to the gay Arabs who flee their countries for Tel Aviv, where they live secretly, "because they would be murdered at home if they revealed their sexuality".

A well known gay activist in Israel, Mike Hamel told the Guardian that the group of Israelis were invited as individuals and not as the country's official representatives, and questioned "why do they mix politics with a gay pride procession?"

"The truth is this is not really an occupation of the West Bank at all, its colonisation - aggressive on going colonisation! There are now nearly half a million permanent settlers in the West Bank. Pristine hill top settlements are omnipresent and canonise the West Bank. What’s more they breed yet more electric fences, moats, Jew-only roads, road-blocks, checkpoints, soldiers - over 500 of them. Imagine if this situation was reversed, if it was the Palestinians doing this to the Jews would the reaction of this government and the world be the same? I don't think so."